Port Lands charrette, Toronto ON
Designed as WRT/Solomon ETC with UDA, 2002
John Ellis Urban Designer with Paul Ostergaard, Joe Lobko, Mark Nikita and others
The city of Toronto organized a three-day design chsarrette with six architectural teams from around the world to explore development potential for the brownfield sites where the Don River meets Lake Ontario. Teams included local architects and were led by architects such as Jack Diamond, Fred Koetter, Antoine Grumbach, Erik von Egeret and UDA. Each team was given a separate site and asked to develop proposals and relate with the designs by the adjoining team. The UDA/Solomon ETC team explored the Cherry Street site between a canal and the lakeshore to propose an urban design with a pattern of blocks arranged around a trio of midblock squares. A variety of housing types is shown ranging from high-rise towers facing the canal, to rowhouses fronting the park.
A range of residential building types from high-rise towers facing the canal and townhouses facing the park.
Aerial of Cherry Beach between the canal and the waterfront park.
Street and block pattern showing the canals, midblock squares and waterfront park.
The block pattern consists of park squares alternating with canals to create a complex urban fabric. A retail street served by a light rail line is shown in red.
Plan shown in the context of the surrounding blocks as proposed by Fred Koetter, one of the other participants in the charrette.